Smaller Animals:Sugar glider, Brush-tailed phascogale (rare) Bat ( several species seen at dusk) and Antichenus.

Reptiles:Frogs including Pobblebonk, Spotted-marsh, Striped marsh frog,Southern-brown, Common-eastern froglet, Peron’s Tree Frog, Brown Tree Frog, and Lizards including Common Bluetongue, and several species of Skinks.Snakes including Tiger, Eastern-brown and Copperhead.

Hamilton Road’s Frog Symphony

Jill and Graeme Jameson remodelled their swimming pool into a luxurious pond to encourage frogs to stay and play. Jill reports:

“Since transforming our kidney-shaped pool into a smaller, more environmentally-friendly pond, several species of frog have taken up residence. Before the make-over earlier arrivals had limited plant cover and few water plants, so the frogs were easy pickings for kookaburras and black ducks.

Now, with more luxuriant plant cover frog calls begin late in the afternoon and continue through the night. And they seem to know when rain will come because two days ahead they will croak all day.

So far, I met a Southern Brown (Ewing’s) tree frog (Litoria ewingi) a common southern Victoria species that lay their eggs in the pond.

The Spotted Marsh Frog (Limnodynastes tasmaniensis), is another common Victorian frog. The males call ‘tock, tock, tock’ while floating in water.

Victorian Smooth Froglets (Geocrinia Victoriana), appear late in summer and autumn. Their call is, ‘a long harsh introductory note followed by a long series of short rapidly repeated explosive musical notes – ‘wa-a-a-a-a-ark pip-pip-pip-pip-pip….’ They lay 90-160 eggs in leaf litter. The Spotted Marsh frog lays up to 1500 eggs. Just as well, given the range of predators!

We have also had Pobble-bonk or Banjo frogs (Limnodynastes dumerili), distinguished by their resonant ‘bonk- bonk–bonk’ and they seem more numerous since more cover has been established around the pond”.